At the end of 2012, Christer Kaitila started what is now known as the One Game A Month challenge. The purpose of this challenge is to get indie game developers to start making and finishing games with the goal of releasing 12 games in 12 months. The challenge had a lot of participants for 2013 many of whom failed to meet the goal, but many others completed it successfully.
Divine Knight Gaming was one challenger who started in 2013 but failed to finish. This year, they mean to change that.
DKG’s first entry in the 2014 One Game A Month challenge is a simple vertical shooter called Dragon Canyon. It isn’t a feature rich game, but it is a complete game. As DKG describes the experience on its blog:
As we posted on our new year resolution post, we are trying again for the One Game A Month challenge this year. We had made an attempt to do so last year, but only managed to get through February. But even those games were not ones that we actually worked on that year.
This year, we are actually going to go for it. As such, we have finished our first game for the year, Dragon Canyon. Dragon Canyon is a game in so much as there is gameplay, a scoring mechanism and an end condition. It isn’t a complete game in that it is missing a few things.
The full game can be played on DKG’s website.
According to their New Year Resolution post, their goal is to make something different each month.
We also have a number of other games we want to start making. This year, we really want to achieve that One Game A Month challenge. It is a noble goal and one that we could easily do. We just need to sit down and do it. Just one weekend a month would get that done. Just some private game jams to get them done and out. They don’t have to be flashy or big, just done. That is all that matters. Completing the game.
I can’t make any promises on what types of games we will create along side Demon’s Hex. I can just promise that we will try to do something different each time. While it would be easy to fall back on the same mechanics and genre’s it wouldn’t expand our minds nor foster creativity.
We will be watching and will post about each entry.
Full Disclosure: I am the lead developer of Divine Knight Gaming and the creator of Dragon Canyon. I tend to not self promote too often, but this is something that I think the greater Oklahoma Game Development community can benefit from.
